Message from the General Manager

As summer winds down, camps across the country will start evaluating what worked and what areas need improvement to deliver a stellar and rewarding camp next year – to help better manage, drive greater efficiencies, and more effectively manage finances.

Our experienced account management team is available to work with you and help you improve cash flow, maintain growth, and reduce costs. Through our years of experience working to help camps better manage their services, we’ve developed a brief article, "Strategic Camps Checklist: Simple Changes to Impact Your Bottom Line" to help you look for savings in your camp operations.

We hope you enjoy this issue of ActiveCamps, which is chock full of valuable information to help you wind down the 2010 season and start thinking about the seasons to come, whether next summer or a special weekend session. Please feel free to email us any comments or suggestions.

Stephen Branstetter
General Manager, CampRegister

CampRegister Team Visits Camp Stand By Me

This August, the CampRegister team had the privilege to spend a day with one of our camp customers, Easter Seals Camp Stand By Me near Seattle, WA. The plan for the day was simple – meet with Ellen Stone, Camp Director, learn more about Camp Stand By Me’s technology needs and spend some time helping out around camp. Camp Stand By Me is a fully accessible recreational facility providing residential summer camp and respite services for children and adults of any age with any disability. Camp Stand By Me’s facilities and trained staff allow campers to participate in all activities, regardless of their disabilities, giving each camper the opportunity to have a fully inclusive experience that he or she will never forget.

The day spent at Camp Stand By Me will certainly never be forgotten by the team. Needless to say, they found the experience to be truly inspirational, despite most of the volunteers having some experience working with children of special needs. The CampRegister team spent a day doing everything from helping with arts and crafts, activity support, landscaping, and even applied a fresh coat of paint. Here’s what one of the volunteers had to say:

"I was inspired by how something that would seem trivial to most kids, was absolutely amazing to these special campers. Having worked with special kids in the past, I was truly moved by the campers’ faces and the sheer joy they had when they accomplished something they put their minds to."

Rob Pucher,
CampRegister Technology Consultant

Not only did the day at Camp Stand By Me pull at the team’s heartstrings, but it also allowed them to learn how Ellen has saved immeasurable amounts of time because of the CampRegister system. With a special needs camp, there is an enormous amount of camper information that needs to be gathered – from medical needs and mobility requirements to personal care needs – something that is extremely time consuming for both camp staffers to manually data–enter and camp parents, who were previously completing a new registration form each year. By moving the registration process online, it allows parents to simply update the pre–populated camper information each year with any changes. Since this was the first year using CampRegister, Ellen anticipates that Camp Stand By Me 2011 registration will be even more successful and rave reviews from parents will continue to grow.

Thank you Ellen (and all Camp Directors) for opening your heart to helping campers find success – no matter how great or small – and allowing the team to spend time with you and truly learn what camp is all about.

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Strategic Camps Checklist

There are always a million things to think about when it comes to better managing your camp operations, from staffing, camper recruitment, managing camp facilities, and daily activities. We’ve developed a short article to help you get thinking of some of the most critical things to consider that will help your camp improve operational efficiencies and profitability, impacting your bottom line.

Click here to download CampRegister’s "Strategic Camps Checklist"

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How To: Stay in Touch with Automatic Birthday Messages

Camper retention is important to your continued success and growth, especially with more competition for kids’ time each summer. Stay in touch throughout the year and keep your camp front of mind throughout the year with easy automatic emails.

In order to use Automatic Emails to send birthday greetings to past participants, we recommend you be familiar with how to Create An Email Template and how to Create a Custom Filter.

1. First, navigate to the Communication Center (Tools > Communication Center)
2. Select the "Open Automatic Emails" button and select the orange "Add" button to create a new automatic email task.
3. Next, name the task, and define the "Task Type" as Birthday to send an email out on a registrant’s birthday (The second type is Program Date which sends emails out relative to the program event start or end date).
4. Now enter the age range for the participants by adding a Minimum Age and Maximum Age range to determine who will receive your birthday greetings email.
5. Next, select the email you want to send (Note: You must have previously created your birthday greeting email template – refer to how to Create An Email Template)
6. Lastly, select the orange "Save" button and your birthday email will automatically be sent out on the correct dates to participants who falls within the age range you entered.

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Upcoming Developments

There are always a lot of exciting developments taking place around here – from new product features to new customer successes – and we have another one on the horizon, a change to our name. Over the coming months, the name CampRegister will be retired and we will be taking on our parent name, Active Network. This was not a quick and simple decision. However when we realized that a brand transition has the potential to help our camps grow the decision was easy.

You’re probably asking yourself, "How can a brand change of my camp software provider help my camp?" This initial announcement is a bit of a teaser to wet your appetite – we’ll announce in more detail along with new features, product options and more in the coming weeks.

To learn more about Active Network and our camp management solutions, just let us know

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